This is our October update of news from the Respitech group at the WIMR.

October has been a hectic yet productive month for the Respitech group. Firstly the team hosted the Drug Delivery Australia Conference (DDA 2013) at the Woolcock Level 5 conference venue. 100 national and international delegates participated and we had keynote speakers Igor Gonda (Aradigm) and Ian Tucker (current president of the CRS) give insightful talks on the future of drug development and delivery. The conference ran over 2 days and covered a range of topics including respiratory drug delivery, cancer targeting and novel drug delivery vehicles. There were a number of student prizes, great food, a highly popular ice-cream cart and a cruise on the harbour. Thanks to the whole team for all the effort they have put in to make this a success!

DDA2013 Delegates

Meanwhile, the ECR2STAR program is picking up pace. We are already approaching capacity for our first workshop in London and have finalised the academic and industrial speakers. The web-site has been visited by 2000 people and we have contributors from around the globe participating with articles and comments via Facebook and Linkedin. If you are a early career research and want to learn more visit ecr2star.org.

Back at the Institute, members of the group have been busy working to develop the Woolcock’s new profile and have successfully launched the new woolcock.org.au web portal. This was completed in time for the Governor of New South Wales reception for the Institute, held at Government house in Sydney which Paul attended on behalf of the Respiratory Technology Group.

We would like to congratulate YY (Hui Xin Ong) for being awarded her PhD from the University of Sydney. YY’s thesis is entitled ‘Transport Mechanisms of Inhaled Ciprofloxacin Formulations Across Calu-3 Lung Epithelia’ YY will continue working with the group and spend next year applying the findings from her thesis to transport kinetics of drugs in humans, using scintigraphic techniques at Southampton Hospital in the UK.

Lastly, we would like to congratulate John Chan and Alessandro Sadat for publishing two papers this month. John was the first author on a paper published in Pharmaceutical Research, focussing on novel inhaled anti-tuberculosis drugs while Alessandro ’s paper in Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology described a inhaled macrolide formulation designed to target bronchiectasis.